Thursday, March 01, 2012

Logarithm Applications

I shuffled around my precalculus curriculum (was eager to get to intense trigonometry in the fall) and am JUST almost through logs and ln and e. My class spent a day on applications, and we had some fun conversations about the following scenarios. My last day will be spent showing them log graphing paper and log-log and semi-log and 1-cycle and "how do they get the partitions" and why would someone graph on log graph paper and all that. Sheesh! The year (as always) is whizzing by.

For a Triangle Inequality Problem, I found out something that was fun to do for the Math Pre-service teachers who are studying to be K-12 teachers.

Materials: uncooked spaghetti

Take the spaghetti and break it into three strips. Try to make a triangle where the combined length of two spaghetti segments is less than the third segment. Let students tell you if they are having any success. Then take two segments, whose total length is greater than or equal to the length of the third segment. Can they make a triangle? They should be able to. See if you like it.